CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T TOO


Former Wirecard boss Braun stonewalls German lawmakers' inquiry

By Christian Kraemer and John O'Donnell 2020-11-19

© Reuters/FABRIZIO BENSCH 

Former Wirecard CEO testifies before German parliamentary committee in Berlin

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Wirecard's former boss stonewalled questions from lawmakers on Thursday when he was temporarily released from jail for an inquiry into post-war Germany's biggest corporate fraud.

Markus Braun, wearing his hallmark turtle neck and a blazer, declined to answer more than 50 questions about Wirecard's demise, other than to say no German officials behaved inappropriately.

Braun, who has denied any wrongdoing and said Wirecard was the victim of a wider fraud, is in jail awaiting trial. He told lawmakers on Thursday he had confidence in the German legal system but said little else in a prepared speech.

The former chief executive's stance is a setback for lawmakers investigating the implosion of a German tech star once worth $28 billion, which folded owing billions.

Braun said he had also refused to speak to Munich state prosecutors, who have charged him with fraud and embezzlement, although he pledged to cooperate with them.

Some of the German parliamentarians, who were visibly irritated, resorted to posing questions of Braun such as about his family, before the hearing was temporarily disbanded.

Braun's appearance, which is being closely watched in Germany and again highlighted the Wirecard scandal, increasing pressure on German chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz ahead of 2021 national elections.

Wirecard's collapse embarrassed the German government, which prides itself on a reputation for rectitude and reliability, amid criticism that authorities ignored red flags.

LOBBYING

Lawmakers told Reuters they had hoped to find out about Braun's contact with German officials, in particular a meeting in November 2019 with deputy finance minister Joerg Kukies.

German authorities have rejected any suggestion of improper government influence involving Wirecard. Braun too said there had been no improper behaviour by officials.

Asked on Thursday by Reuters about Braun's meeting with Kukies, the Finance Ministry referred to an earlier statement that it touched on topics including allegations of market manipulation, as well as, more generally, cryptocurrencies and the business model of payment firms.

Scholz, who heads Germany's finance ministry and is responsible for regulator BaFin, has also been criticised for the authorities' failure to take Wirecard to task, spending years probing the company's critics instead.

Scholz has since pledged to tighten financial controls.

The affair has also reached Germany's chancellery as the government has said Merkel brought up a planned Wirecard acquisition in China during a visit there in September 2019 and that a senior official subsequently pledged it further support.

In an official parliamentary response, the government said that Merkel did not know at the time of the irregularities at Wirecard, which was dismantled after its disclosure of a 1.9 billion euro hole in its accounts in June.

Prosecutors have been criticised for not spotting problems, instead investigating journalists at the Financial Times, which first published allegations about its accounting.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T
Meet Ivan Boesky, the 1980s Wall Street titan who inspired Hollywood — and ended up in jail

Tom Huddleston Jr. CNBC

In 1985, Ivan Boesky reportedly told the graduates of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley that greed was "healthy." Legend has it the sentiment and Boesky himself inspired the iconic character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie "Wall Street."

© Provided by CNBC Portrait of risk arbitrager Ivan Boesky in his office.

Today, Boesky's name may no longer be synonymous with Wall Street millions or corporate greed. But in the early 1980s, Boesky was an investment banking titan who made hundreds of millions of dollars betting on corporate takeovers. That was until his reputation and his stock brokerage came crashing down in what was then the biggest insider trading scandal of all time.

Boesky, who is now 83 and remains banned from securities trading, is one of the subjects of the new CNBC primetime limited series "Empires of New York," which premieres Sunday, Nov. 29 at 8 p.m. ET and chronicles the rise of such infamous Big Apple figures of the 1980s as Boesky and mobster John Gotti, as well as future politicians Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump.

Here's what you need to know about Ivan Boesky.

A 'Great Gatsby' character

"Ivan Boesky is, in some ways, a 'Great Gatsby' character … this self-made person, very much invented," Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean says in the first episode of "Empires of New York."

Journalist Jeff Madrick, who helped Boesky write a book on mergers in 1985, says in "Empires of New York" that the Wall Street trader was a "classic outsider" who "didn't do well in school." And, while Boesky was a member of New York City's Harvard Club, and he sometimes dropped hints that he had an Ivy League education himself, he reportedly on obtained his membership in the club by donating money.

Building a $500 million empire out of junk

The son of Russian immigrants, Boesky also rarely advertised the fact that he got his start as a businessman in his 20s by working in the Detroit pubs owned by his father, including helping to run a strip club that operated out of the basement of one such establishment.

But Boesky married into a wealthy family. Boesky and his wife, Seema Silberstein, moved to New York in 1966, where he began working as a stock broker on the advice of a friend who was having success as a Wall Street trader.

By 1975, Boesky opened a stock brokerage, called Ivan F. Boesky & Company, with $700,000 in seed money that mostly came from his wife's family.

© Provided by CNBC Ivan Boesky flying in a helicopter above Manhattan.

How he built his fortune

Boesky's specialty was stock arbitrage, which is a term that describes when stock traders try to exploit market inefficiencies, such as when a trader believes one company's stock has been undervalued. Arbitrage traders like Boesky often buy up big chunks of stock in a company on the bet that the price will jump, especially if that company is on the verge of being acquired. It can be a big gamble, especially if a takeover falls through or the company's stock drops for any other reason.

Relaxed financial regulation under President Ronald Reagan opened the door for a flood of corporate mergers and acquisitions in the 1980s, creating a fertile ground for traders like Boesky to make money.

"Boesky had this reputation for literally living on the telephone all day and night," CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin says, looking for any "morsel" of information that might give him a leg up on the rest of the market. "And if it didn't work out for him, he was throwing things."

Boesky reportedly became the highest-paid trader on Wall Street in 1985, according to the Associated Press. At the peak of his investment business, Boesky was overseeing an investment fund with over $3 billion in assets and he had a net worth of more than $200 million (more than $475 million in today's money) and a place on the Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest people.

And he wasn't shy about advertising his success, as The New York Times pointed out that Boesky was the first arbitrage trader on Wall Street to hire his own public relations firm, as he would gladly promote himself by taking speaking engagements at events across the country and even writing a book, with the journalist Madrick, called "Merger Mania."

© Provided by CNBC Ivan Boesky enters his limousine in 1986.

Boesky also regularly traveled by helicopter in between his brokerage's Manhattan office and his nearly 190-acre Westchester County estate, purchased from heirs of the Revlon cosmetics company and featuring a 12-bedroom, red brick Georgian mansion. And, a limousine with three different telephones installed reportedly chauffeured Boesky around the city.

The downfall

But Boesky had not been playing by the rules. After Boesky lost a reported $60 million on a failed deal for Cities Services (a predecessor to Citgo) in 1982, he started an insider trading scheme in an effort to save his business and avoid any such debacles going forward.

Boesky entered into an illegal partnership with prominent investment banker Martin Siegel, of the Wall Street firm Kidder, Peabody & Co., to get inside information on pending corporate transactions, Boesky later admitted to the SEC while pleading guilty to an insider trading charge in 1987.

Siegel provided Boesky with illegal inside information on deals that Boesky eventually admitted made Boesky more than $33 million in profit between 1982 and 1986. (In return, Boesky paid Siegel roughly $700,000 in bonuses for those tips.)

But in November 1986, Boesky's game of arbitrage came to an end when federal officials arrested the then 49-year-old stock trader after discovering his role in a similar but separate insider trading scheme with Dennis Levine, an investment banker at the Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, from which Boesky made roughly $50 million in profits, according to the government.

© Provided by CNBC Ivan Boesky leaves Federal Court after sentencing in 1987.

Boesky cooperated with federal authorities, pleading guilty to a single charge of making false statements to the government and agreeing to pay a then-record $100 million fine. He also informed on some of his other partners, including Seigel. Boesky also offering information on investor and "junk bond king" Michael Milken.

The aftermath

Boesky served just over two years in prison. As part of his guilty plea, Boesky received a lifetime ban from securities trading.

But after his arrest, Boesky attained a level of infamy that easily outpaced the fame his financial success had earned him.

© Provided by CNBC Boesky appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the moniker

When director Oliver Stone looked for inspiration for Gekko, who embodied corporate greed on the silver screen (and ultimately met a similar fate to Boesky), the Academy Award-winning filmmaker drew on the real-life stories of multiple infamous investors, from Boesky to fellow insider trader Owen Morrissey.

The movie's famous "greed … is good" speech delivered by Gekko (portrayed by actor Michael Douglas) echoed what Boesky reportedly said at Berkeley: "Greed is all right, by the way … I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."

Boesky's wife, Seema, divorced him in 1991 and paid him a settlement of $23 million, along with an annual sum of $180,000 for life.

For the most part, Boesky has remained out of the limelight over the subsequent decades. In 2012, one of Boesky's cousins told The New York Times that the disgraced trader was living in La Jolla, California with his second wife and a new child. "That's about all I know," said Boesky's cousin.

CNBC Make It's attempts to reach Boesky for comment were unsuccessful.

Tesla isn't dominating the electric bike market, but here are the players that might

Harley Davidson and Honda are among the dominant motorcycle makers with big plans in electric bikes.

Harley also recently announced that it is spinning off a nascent electric bicycle business.

Uber is among the top investors in electric scooter company Lime, which just posted its first quarterly profit, while competitor Bird is reportedly planning to soon go public via a SPAC.

NIU Technologies, which makes smart scooters, has seen its share price soar.

© Providy CNBC The Harley-Davidson LiveWire electric motorcycle doesn't have big sales yet, but CEO Jochen Zeitz recently remarked during an earnings call

Tesla reached a $500 billion market valuation this week, a sign of its dominance in the electric vehicle market. But Elon Musk has shown no real interest in one growing EV segment: battery-powered scooters and motorcycles. An accident he suffered as a youth on a motorbike — nearly fatal, Musk has said — turned him off two-wheelers, for now. But the manufacturing of battery powered bikes is growing and consolidating, which means it's likely to produce one or more dominant players in the years to come.


The electric motorcycle and scooter market reached $30 billion in 2019, according to a June 2020 report by Preeti Wadhwani and Prasenjit Saha from the research company Global Market Insights (GMI). They estimated that the market — which includes everything from large motorcycles meant for interstate cruising to tiny stand-up scooters as used by Lime and Bird — will grow more than 4% annually for the next few years and hit $40 billion in 2026.

Concerns over vehicular emissions, increasing consumer awareness about air pollution, and increasing investments by government authorities in the development of EV charging infrastructure are all expected to keep the market growing. Another factor boosting electric bike prospects is the continued improvement in batteries.
E-bikes, scooters and motorcycles

Electric motorcycles and scooters are still relatively pricey, and none yet matches the range of the best gas bikes, but that's slowly changing. Lithium ion battery costs are down 85% in the last decade, said Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research. Within another 10 years, electric motorcycles can achieve price parity with gas bikes, he predicts.

"The playing field is wide open," says Nelson. He noted that Honda, Yamaha and Harley-Davidson together control about two-thirds of the global motorcycle market, and are each developing electric motorbikes. So too are other big established players, such as the Indian-multinationals Hero Motors and Bajaj Auto, and some smaller electric-only startups, including Zero Motorcycles and Energetica.

Electric mobility is leading to a manufacturing boom for vehicles sized between small foldable scooters and full-on motorcycles, said Sam Korus, an analyst at ARK Invest, which is known for its big bet on Tesla. Uber led a round of investment in Lime earlier this year, while Bird is reportedly considering a public offering through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)

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© Provided by CNBC E-scooters from the electric scooter-sharing providers Lime and Bird in Hannover, Germany.

Troy Siahaan, a road test editor at Motorcycle.com, races a lightweight custom-built electric bike, giving him insight into the similarities and differences between gas and electric two-wheelers.

"The riding experience of an electric bike is similar to gas-powered motorcycles in that you twist the throttle and go," he said, "but you don't get sound, vibration or engine heat with electric bikes. By and large, they also don't require shifting, so they're easier for new riders than most gas bikes."

Siahaan also likes the torque output — a measure of the acceleration — of electric bikes, since it is all available at the outset.

Nelson noted that most growth right now is in the small- to mid-sized section of the electric motorcycle and scooter market. These are popular in China and Southeast Asia, where two-wheelers are more common as a mode of transportation, and pollution and noise reduction are socially and environmentally appealing.

Post-Covid-19 demand in urban mobility

Korus said Chinese scooter manufacturer NIU is among the promising players operating in the space between small folding scooters and large motorcycles. The company, which went public in 2018, sells its app-supported smart scooters in 38 countries across Asia, Europe and North and South America. Its stock has risen sharply. The stylish sit-on scooters offer up to 87 miles of range (140 km), multi-color dynamic gauge displays and GPS-based anti-theft systems.

NIU's primary competition are low-cost manufacturers in China, which make scooters that are less "smart" than its offerings, as well as the higher-end players out of Asia and Europe, which tend to be priced higher. A NIU model may sell for roughly $3,100, while a comparable Honda is over $5,000, a Vespa over $7,000, and a BMW anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000, according to Vincent Yu, a Needham & Co. analyst.

© Provided by CNBC NIU Technologies' stock price has risen sharply, and it is profitable, though questions remain about how large the two-wheeled electric scooter market will be.

Korus noted that NIU's software actively collects data that can be used to support autonomous driving and allows the company to add value on top of just selling products. This is also a key feature of Tesla's business model, which ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood has pointed to in her bullish thesis on Musk's company. But for NIU, monetization of autonomous driving may be fairly far off into the future. Yu said today there is high value in the smart features focused on theft prevention and vehicle maintenance, for example, knowing when parts need replacement. Its lightweight lithium-ion batteries are also an advantage over heavier, older electric scooters as consumers look for more portable batteries that are easier to swap in and out.

A big question for NIU is just how big the market can get and whether it can grow both manufacturing capacity and a retail store network along with it, Yu said. Asia is still heavily reliant on petroleum-based scooters, especially Southeast Asia, but that is changing. And, as the world emerges from the Covid pandemic, Yu is betting more travelers will shy away from mass transit and opt for scooters. In countries like China, they are much easier to obtain than cars thanks to lower costs and less regulation and permitting requirements, especially in larger cities.

NIU commands over 26% of the Chinese e-scooter sales market, and has risen in Europe to No. 3 over the past two years. Yu added that NIU is building a new factory, targeting major Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, and adding more stores around the world to capitalize on the demand. In Q3, the company opened 182 stores and now has another 100 under construction.

Harley-Davidson and the electric future

In the U.S., smaller motorcycles suitable for urban transportation and only occasional highway use are not as popular as in Asia and Europe. Nelson said U.S. buyers tend to be older and favor larger bikes with traditional looks and the signature sounds of a combustion engine.

Harley-Davidson, the largest and oldest U.S. motorcycle manufacturer, has addressed these buyers with its LiveWire, an electric motorcycle with traditional cruiser styling and an impressive 105 horsepower that lets it accelerate to 60 miles per hour in a quick 3.1 seconds. The LiveWire is 7-feet long and nearly 550 pounds, giving it the size and weight to fit in with the company's mainstream gas-powered offerings, but, at $30,000, it's just too expensive for many potential customers.

With the traditional American motorcycle buyer aging, Harley sales are down almost 40% since their peak in 2006. "Demographics will be a problem for them," Nelson said.

Harley is committed to electric under a relatively new management team, led by CEO Jochen Zeitz, who earned high marks for his focus on sustainability as CEO of Puma. "We believe electric needs to play an important role in the future of Harley-Davidson," he recently told Wall Street analysts. He said sales volumes are low relative to traditional bikes, but added, "It must be an important segment in the long term future of the company and it's also attracting new riders, new customers to the brand that might not have considered Harley-Davidson before."

Craig Kennison, who covers Harley for RW Baird, said the priority for Zeitz and his team is to shore up Harley's finances and focus its business on the key markets where it can generate the most profits from core consumers today, and it will continue to generate the vast majority of its business from its V-twin internal combustion engine cycles (sales for LiveWire are not disclosed but the assumption is they remain very minor). "It's not a big number," Kennison said.

Similar to the path chosen by Tesla to first focus on the luxury consumer, Harley needs to perfect the electric motorcycle technology and given the price points today — it cannot alone control the cost curve in key areas like battery technology — only over time will it become more affordable to a larger consumer market. But if Harley makes the right decisions on current profitability centers, it will support the investment in electric vehicles over the decades to come, he said. "Right now Harley has a huge market and needs to make as much money as they can, and servicing the core customer, which is still highly profitable, is the focus."

Harley is headed into the pedal bicycle market as well. It recently announced that it will spin off its electric bicycle effort, which has been in research and development for a few years, retaining a minority stake in the new firm, Serial 1 Company, a reference to its first-ever machine.

Targeting the e-bicycle market, with pricing below $5,000, is a smart move by Harley's new management, as it makes the brand affordable for the masses in a growing segment, said Brandon Rolle, Northcoast Research analyst. And similar to NIU's target scooter market, riders may not need a driver's license to operate these vehicles, which will help in Harley-Davidson's appeal to urban commuters and casual recreational cyclists.

High-end bicycle makers like Specialized have an early lead in this market — e-bikes which generate power that is multiplied by the human pedaling activity — and it does have the potential for widespread appeal in the future, according to Kennison. "It lets 'the everyman' get on the road … especially during the pandemic people want to get outside and bicycling is a great way to do it, but depending on your fitness level, having the added electrical power creates a totally different experience. You can go 20 to 50 miles and it changes the appeal" he said.
Harley's motorcycle competitors

In the near future, pent up demand for outdoor products caused by Covid-19 could benefit motorcycle makers, including Harley, which has had a "rough last five years" according to Wedbush Securities analyst James Hardiman. "A lot of investors have looked at Harley-Davidson and the broader motorcycle one as not benefitting," from the new outdoors boom, the analyst said. But industry sales and used sales are both up, and those are precursors for a broader-based recovery in bike sales, Hardiman recently told CNBC. While the bear case about the aging demographics isn't going away, it has been that way for a decade already, he said.

Among Harley's competitors for the future full-size motorcycle buyer are not just traditional players like Honda and Yamaha, but Zero and Energetica, which have some of the most advanced electric bike technology currently available, Siahaan said.

Zero, founded in Santa Cruz, California, in 2006, isn't a household name, but it's one of the most established players in the field. It began selling electric motorcycles in 2009, making it one of the very first production two-wheelers (the earliest production electric motorcycles and scooters appeared in the 1970s and 1990s, respectively, but enjoyed limited success).

Zero's current all-electric line-up includes everything from the FX, a small on- and off-road capable "dual-sport" motorcycle starting at $9,300, all the way up to the SR/S sportbike which starts at $20,000. The 110-horsepower SR/S can reach 124 miles per hour and is capable of more than 200 miles of range when equipped with an enhanced battery. The FR/S is so advanced Road and Track alluded to Zero getting close to the being the Tesla of two wheels in its review. Zero offers it with an app that lets users modify the bikes maximum speed, power, torque and regenerative braking parameters.

© Provided by CNBC A Zero FX electric motorcycle just after purchase in June 2019 at a Chicago, Illinois, store. Built in California, Zero motorcycles have been the best-selling electric motorcycle brand on the market. Harley-Davidson's CEO claims that since it introduced the LiveWire, its brand has selling well, but the Zero FX and a newer cheaper model, Zero FX/S, are as low as one-third the price of a LiveWire.

Zero reached a 10-year deal with Polaris, a recreational vehicle powerhouse, that should give it the resources to further expand manufacturing and distribution. It will bring Zero's powertrain technology and software to Polaris' lineup of snowmobiles and off-road vehicles.

The high-end brand Energetica was formed in 2010 as a subsidiary of CRP Group, a motorsport and aviation manufacturer based in Modena, Italy. It offers a small lineup of attractively styled bikes starting at $17,600 for the general-purpose Eva EsseEsse9, and ending with the top-of-the-line Ego+. The latter is a 145-horsepower sportbike with an eye-watering starting price of nearly $24,000, but a 150 mph top speed and up to 250 miles of range.

Saha of the Global Marketing Institute told CNBC that the company is investing highly in R&D and owns several patents related to electric vehicle manufacturing in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Of course, as the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, Honda Motorcycles of Japan, is not standing still. It recently filed patents for electric-powered versions of its CB125R and CB300R, these are small, easy to manage general purpose bikes with "café racer" styling.

Saha notes that Honda is also making large investments in the development of swappable battery technology for electric motorcycles to allow riders to quickly replace the batteries after use. These moves, and factors like its global dealer and distribution network will aid Honda, Saha said.

Tesla moving beyond cars

And then there is Tesla. Though Musk has said the company will not produce a road bike, he has announced plans to release an electric all-terrain vehicle, the Cyberquad, late in 2021, and has at least teased the possibility of one day making a two-wheeled electric bike. In the least, Tesla could easily pivot a portion of its battery business to supplying other manufacturers, says Nelson.

Generating revenue is a big concern for any start-up, but especially in the electric motorcycle space, where federal and state-level regulation abound and consumer expectations are high. Many of the companies that first entered the electric two-wheeler market place have failed or been absorbed by larger players. This includes Brammo, which launched in 2002 and sold bikes with six-speed transmissions like those in traditional gas bikes rather than the single-speed automatics most electric manufacturers use. It was first purchased by the recreational vehicle maker Polaris in 2015, then engine maker Cummins in 2017. Brammo-branded bikes are no longer sold, but its technology lives on with its purchasers.

A similar fate befell Alta Motors, a maker of technologically advanced off-road electric bikes. The company shuttered operations in 2018 and its assets were taken over by Bombardier's Recreational Products business in 2019 for use across its product lineup, which includes Ski Doo snowmobiles and the Can-Am line of three-wheel motorcycles.

"It's always difficult to predict the future," Siahaan said. "A lot of companies come out with big, bold announcements, but never even come to market."

"It's very early, so it is difficult to see how it all plays out, but that's typical of a true growth market," added Kennison.

Trudeau pranked into talking Trump, ‘South Park’ with fake Greta Thunberg

That wasn't your friend, buddy

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© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz 

Prime Minister and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau speaks Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in Montreal on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent over 10 minutes on the phone with Russian pranksters in January, when they used a bot to pose as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Russian comedy duo Vovan and Lexus, a.k.a. Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, posted audio from the call online this week, in their latest successful prank on a celebrity figure. The comedians have pulled similar stunts with Prince Harry, U.S. vice president-elect Kamala Harris and actor Joaquin Phoenix in the past.

Read more: Prince Harry opened up in fake call from ‘Greta Thunberg,’ pranksters say

The fake Thunberg asked Trudeau about a wide range of topics, including the Iran plane crash, U.S. President Donald Trump, NATO and Prince Harry's relationship with Meghan Markle. "She" also repeatedly asked Trudeau about Terrance and Phillip, the Canadian cartoon characters from the show South Park.

The PM eventually clued into the South Park reference and ended the call.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) tells Global News that the prank happened in January, shortly after Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 crashed in Iran. Many world leaders were reaching out to Trudeau at the time to offer their condolences over the 85 Canadians who died in the crash, the PMO says.

"The Prime Minister determined the call was fake and promptly ended it," a PMO spokesperson said. He added that Trudeau is not the only world leader to be targeted by these pranksters.

In the audio recording, the fake Thunberg says she's concerned that the Iran incident will lead to a "Third World War." She then tries to bait Trudeau into saying something about Trump, who she describes as the "main bastard" who is "doing everything to kill us."

"I understand your words," Trudeau says. "My responsibility is to work with the world leaders that other people choose ... I can certainly understand that people feel very, very strongly about him."

The Russian pranksters complain about NATO in the call and urge Trudeau to abandon the alliance, which was formed in part to deter Russia's international ambitions.

"Leave NATO, drop your weapons, pick flowers, smile at nature," the fake Thunberg says in broken English.

"I also dream of a world in which soldiers are not necessary, but we don't live in that world yet, unfortunately," Trudeau says. "It does take people to push back against those who would harm innocents."

The PM thanked "Thunberg" on the call for her visit to Montreal last year, saying that it helped shape the conversation during the last federal election.

The pranksters' tried to convince Trudeau to join a vague "club" of world leaders, but he refused to do so without further details.

They also tried to draw him out on Prince Harry and Markle, who were in the process of leaving the Royal Family at the time.

"I sometimes think that his wife manipulates him," the fake Thunberg says on the call.

"I think in every relationship there are complicated concessions and compromises that are the art of living together," Trudeau responds. "I have met Meghan a few times and she's always been lovely."

He adds that the couple seemed to be acting in the best interests of their family, including their newborn son Archie.

Harry, Markle and their son eventually settled in California after spending a few months in Canada.

The fake Thunberg name-drops Terrance and Phillip a few times throughout the call, but she gives away the prank when she brings them up again around the 10-minute mark.

"By the way Mr. Prime Minister, can you introduce me to Terrance and Phillip? I know that they are big stars in Canada," she says.

Trudeau initially says he will ask his team to connect Thunberg to the comedy duo.

"Oh, that's nice, so you can introduce me to Terrance and Phillip?" she says.

"Wait," Trudeau says. "Terrance and Phillip — were they not in South Park? ... I believe they are South Park parodies of Canadians."

The PM then politely ends the call.

How scribes of the ancient world were the pollsters of their day

Andrew Perrin, Associate Vice President Research, Athabasca University 

In modern elections, pollsters have taken on an almost prophetic role. Pollsters read the signs of the times with big data and pulse checks on public opinion to project imminent exchanges of power. But both prophets and pollsters share a common occupational risk: their respectability rests solely in the reliability of their predictions.

© (Shutterstock) The Dead Sea scrolls show scribes using the theme of four kingdoms (Babylon-Persia, Greece, Rome and the kingdom of God) as a flexible way to prophesize.

In the recent U.S. presidential election, Joe Biden won the presidency, but Donald Trump garnered far more votes than predicted. As in the 2016 election, projections by advance poll missed the mark. Further doubt has been cast on pollsters’ methods.

The reality is polling problems are nothing new. There is a controversial history of polling since the modern advent of this art and science in the 20th century. The back story of political projection by reading the numbers, however, has more ancient roots.

My research in the religious identities of ancient Judaism has led me to study the projections of political exchanges that fell to seers, sages and scribes. To unlock the meaning of the past and project political upheavals or continuity, these figures used a number of methods.

One of the more common mechanisms for reviewing and predicting history involved a simple yet profound numerical tool: counting to four. This technique and structure for seeing the world came to influence ways of seeing and describing empires in surprisingly diverse contexts. Some of our earliest examples are found in ancient Judaism but flourish in many forms in later sources that leveraged this motif to make sense of the past, explain the present and project a better future.

© (Wikimedia Commons) ‘Daniel’s Vision of the Four Beasts,’ woodcut, by Hans Holbein the Younger (ca. 1497–1543).

The book of Daniel

Readers of the biblical book of Daniel are familiar with the motif of counting to four. Characters in the book have multiple nightmares of four-tiered statues or four ferocious monsters, which interpreters later decode as referring to the rise and fall of four empires on the eve of expected divine delivery.

For the writers and readers of Daniel living under the oppressive thumb of empires in ancient Palestine in the centuries leading up to the common era, this meant rule by Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece.

Then the unthinkable happened. Some ancient Jewish groups anticipated the breaking dawn of liberation under divine rule starting in the mid-second century BCE. Instead, the oppression of Hellenistic rulers wore on until Roman warhorses crushed through the horizon in Palestine in 63 BCE. The metrics were misread, the prophecy missed the mark.

How does culture move on from such an epic fail? Rerun the numbers. Rethink the mechanism. Rewrite the prediction.
Dead Sea Scrolls

One of the earliest places we see recalculating predictions is in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This trove of nearly 1,000 fragmentary manuscripts penned or preserved by an ancient Jewish community between 150 BCE to 70 CE includes an Aramaic writing known as the “Four Kingdoms.”

In this text, a Jewish seer beholds four talking trees that disclose that they represent four empires. Though the text is fragmentary, the scribe behind it seems to have conjured a different four kingdom count: Babylon-Persia, Greece, Rome and the kingdom of God. In adapting this theme seen in the book of Daniel, he preserves continuity with the past while accounting for Rome — and sketching apocalyptic hopes for the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

The beauty and complexity of this four kingdoms motif is it is inherently updatable to new political realities. Following these texts is a long history of writers recalculating four kingdoms projections.
Re-ordering the world

An open-access book I co-edited with New Testament scholar Loren Stuckenbruck, Four Kingdom Motifs Before and Beyond the Book of Daniel, explores the scope and spread of this strategy to read the past and write the future.

More than anything, this project revealed the inherent adaptability of the four kingdoms motif across cultural contexts, throughout time and from diverse perspectives. Well beyond the days of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls, this motif enabled communities and creatives to order the world around them and locate themselves on often tumultuous timelines.

For example, Old Testament scholar Ian Young reveals that the earliest Greek translation of the book of Daniel (included in the translation of Hebrew scriptures known as the Septuagint) may have included a fifth kingdom to account for the phases of Hellenistic rule following the conquest of Alexander the Great and the divided domains in his wake.

In the medieval period, some Christian apocalyptic writers imagined that Rome had never really fallen because the Christendom inherited its authority to become an empire without end. They therefore believed they were living in the capstone fourth kingdom that was the pinnacle of history.

Apocalyptic literature scholar Lorenzo DiTommaso shows how rethinking the very idea of empire enabled seventh-century writer Pseudo-Methodius to imagine Christian Europe as the capstone fourth kingdom. He then leveraged this idea to critique the emerging imperial forces of Islam in the Levant.

These examples underscore that the timelines of apocalyptic hopes are always responsive to current crises.

Yet the potential of the four kingdoms mechanism cut both ways: some Muslim interpreters also looked to the book of Daniel and found evidence of their own ascendancy. Arabic Bible scholar Miriam Hjälm notes how in the 18th century, the Shiʿah Muslim Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī perceived that the book of Daniel’s mention of a kingdom “that shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44) was the Islamic empire.
Envisioning the world

Scholar of biblical interpretation Brennan Breed highlighted how some European map-makers relied on four kingdoms motifs that influenced earlier writers when they envisioned the world.

The immense medieval Hereford map structures the world around the spiritual centre of Jerusalem, with Christ enthroned at the top. The four empires of Babylon, Media, Macedonia and Rome are placed on the east-west axis to depict the progression of empires as culminating in English rule. The map-maker notes the cartography is inspired by the fifth-century Christian writer Orosius’s descriptions of the world, who relied on the four kingdoms motif to inform his understanding of geography and history.
The ongoing history of empire

Tools for developing political projections and making a claim on the world may endure over time, but their implementation is always bound to a context.

Missing the mark in political speculation is nothing new. It’s as old as politics and government itself. When contexts change, we are forced to revisit the mechanisms or metrics used to account for the unexpected present.

The history of overturning and re-imagining empires through religious motifs should give us pause for reflection.

The motif of centring one’s own interests while acknowledging a changing world is embedded in writings inspired by ancient Judaism’s four kingdoms prophecies — including the cultural, material and religious heritage of imperialistic western powers.

The history of the exchanges and evolution of empire is ongoing. Its effects are something we’re only beginning to understand.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The book project featured here was supported by funding from the Canada Research Chair in Religious Identities of Ancient Judaism and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Colby Cosh: A sorrowful end for an astronomic star

NATIONAL POST 2020-11-21

The world’s most famous radio telescope, the 305-metre Arecibo dish nestled in the rough karst of Puerto Rico, has been irrecoverably destroyed . The U.S.’s National Science Foundation (NSF) made the grim announcement Thursday. Arecibo has played a role in innumerable fundamental discoveries in astronomy, and at every imaginable scale. Initially built to detect the radar signatures of missiles re-entering the atmosphere, it has added to our knowledge of planets, comets, galaxies, pulsars, quasars, neutron stars, dwarf stars … literally every celestial object that there is a name for, and some that perhaps don’t have one.

© Provided by National Post This aerial view shows the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on Nov. 19, 2020. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Nov.19 that it will decommission the radio telescope following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse.

Arecibo is ubiquitous in pop culture, but might be most famous for sending the half-whimsical and slightly controversial “Arecibo message” of 1974, a bitmap image intended to give aliens some hints to humans’ appearance, location and intelligence. Up until its demise, the telescope remained Earth’s busiest workhorse for the imaging of asteroids and other near-Earth objects, including ones labelled Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs). ( NASA pointed out in a Thursday statement that these objects and their trajectories are normally discovered by optical telescopes first, so overall planetary defence won’t be compromised.)


The Arecibo telescope consists of a giant spherical reflector, surfaced in aluminum, and a movable receiver mounted 150 metres above the dish. The receiver is held aloft by 18 cables attached to three concrete towers at the circumference of the dish. An auxiliary cable failed in August, and although early analysis showed that the load on the remaining cables was well below their rated failure point, a main cable unexpectedly gave way on Nov. 6.

Engineers and fresh cables were dispatched to the site, but the investigators, backed by the Army Corps of Engineers, quickly concluded that repairs are impossible to make safely . Even demolition, the only choice remaining, will be difficult and risky.

Arecibo is rather reminiscent of other great monuments to modernism; it looks like nothing so much as a domed sports stadium turned upside-down and thrust into the earth, and indeed it shares some of the failings of the Astrodome in Houston or Toronto’s SkyDome (now known as the Rogers Centre). Its versatility has made it possible for it to be superseded in some respects by other, more affordable facilities, and its large scale and innovative design have made it expensive for the NSF to operate. The fixed-reflector design has inspired many other telescopes, and the Chinese completed a 500-metre Arecibo-like device this year, but the state of the art in radio telescopy is now represented by synchronized arrays of interferometers such as the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

Because of its use in imaging planets and asteroids, it might seem natural for the telescope to belong to NASA, which has the responsibility for near-Earth objects. But in the past, when Arecibo budget cuts were being considered by NSF and NASA was badgered for help, NASA’s biting answer was literally “We haven’t asked NSF to operate any of our spacecraft.”

© RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images) A hole in the dish panels of the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, is seen on Nov. 19, 2020, the day the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it is decommissioning the world famous radio telescope.

Whether the telescope died of bureaucratic neglect is a question that will now come before the public and Congress. NASA did eventually come across with some money, but the NSF remained explicitly eager to reduce or offload Arecibo’s costs, although the telescope has never at any moment been considered obsolete. In 2018 a plan was devised to allow a consortium of universities to contribute to its upkeep. But hurricanes and earthquakes kept inflicting insults on the dish and the receiver, and the cabling system, designed in the early ’60s, may simply never have been destined for permanence.

One likely outcome of the disaster will be to provide greater impetus to the international Square Kilometre Array project, the 21st century’s answer to Arecibo. The SKA, which has 13 participating countries but doesn’t formally include the U.S., will consist of thousands of telescopes scattered around the Southern Hemisphere, with large concentrations of arrays located in South Africa and Australia.

Progress toward construction has been halting, and the whole array is not expected to come into service before 2027. SKA faces NIMBY problems, since it requires enormous areas of wilderness to be kept free of all RF-emitting devices, and there are challenges with data capture. SKA can image so much of the sky that supercomputers have to be involved, but China is a key partner, creating legal barriers to tech-sharing. 

© RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images A security guard walks in front of the main entrance of the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on Nov. 19, 2020.

The U.S. might consider giving the SKA some love, and it could also reinvest in the Allen Telescope Array in Shasta County, a largely private project focused on searching for extraterrestrial life. (The name comes from its original benefactor, Microsoft zillionaire Paul Allen.) Like Arecibo, the ATA has potential well beyond its initial purpose, and improving radio telescopy can depend more on software and sophisticated error correction than on elbow grease and engineering megastructures.

That’s part of the heartbreak of losing Arecibo. It’s a beautiful artifact from a time when heroic physical scale was the only avenue for extending the human sensory apparatus, now so dependent on the teeming of digital automata. One thinks with sorrow how wonderful it would be if we could still visit the island of Hven and tour Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg, the place where astrology and alchemy merged into the form of the modern multidisciplinary laboratory. We regret that it was allowed to fall into ruin while repeating the crime ourselves.

The destruction of the Arecibo telescope is also a tragedy for Puerto Rico, following, as it does, a series of unspeakable natural disasters. The commonwealth, so often the U.S.’s ill-treated stepchild, could always point to the telescope as a sign that its pact with the American military-industrial complex brought meaningful benefits. Arecibo was an important tourist attraction and an inspiration to every Puerto Rican kid with an interest in hard science — even, indeed, the Puerto Rican kids who lived elsewhere in the United States.

The scientific work of Arecibo can, with time, be distributed to other telescopes, to Earth-orbit satellites, and perhaps even the surfaces of other celestial bodies. But there is no possibility of comfort for the Arecibeños who have lived proudly between its vast bowl and the sea.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante releases graphic novel detailing political journey

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante can now add "author" to her resume with the publication of a graphic novel in which she recounts her entry into politics and takes subtle digs at the sexism she's encountered along the way.

 

© Provided by The Canadian Press

'"Okay, Universe: Chronicles of a Woman in Politics," tells the story of Simone Simoneau — modelled on Plante — a young community organizer who decides to take the plunge into politics by running for a seat on city council.

Published in both English and French and co-authored by illustrator Delphie Cote-Lacroix, the book follows the initially hesitant Simoneau as she learns to fundraise, knock on doors and recruit volunteers.

Plante, 46, said she began to toy with the idea of publishing a book after she won the mayoralty in 2017. Writing a typical political autobiography didn't appeal, she said.

"For me the graphic novel format was always what I wanted," she said in a recent interview at her publisher's offices.

"I think it’s accessible, it can be fun, and I love graphic novels myself."

The book is based on Plante's own sketches and anecdotes she began jotting down in 2013, during her first run for a seat on city council. Four years later, she became the first woman elected mayor of Montreal after her surprise defeat of experienced incumbent Denis Coderre.

While the writing and drawings were initially a form of self-care to help her "stay balanced," she said she eventually came to see that her story might inspire others, especially young girls.

"I wanted to show, and maybe tell, people it’s OK not to have all the keys and codes to do something you think would be a good thing to do or you believe in," she said.

"Just go for it."

She began working with Cote-Lacroix on evenings and weekends, taking about two years to finalize the story and illustrations.

Plante said that, much like her character in the book, she had been looking for a new challenge before her entry into politics. Then she received a phone call from left-wing municipal party Projet Montreal, which was looking to diversify its slate of candidates.

In the book, Plante doesn't shy away from the challenges faced by women who put themselves in the public eye. At one point, one of her character's posters is defaced by sexist graffiti. In another, her character's husband gets effusive praise for helping to care for the couple's children — something the book points out is a given for female political spouses.

While the book "won't change sexism," Plante said she hopes it will help highlight the double standards women face.

Three years into her mandate, Plante has had a bumpy year, marked by a global pandemic that has devastated the city's economy and criticism over her administration's failure to implement its big visions for affordable housing and transportation. She has also faced anger over what some have described as an anti-car agenda, which includes building bike lanes, eliminating parking spots and temporarily closing some streets to vehicle traffic to create "sanitary corridors."

At times, that criticism has escalated to the level of death threats.

While some criticism is to be expected, Plante attributes much of the public anger directed her way to the anxiety wrought by the pandemic.

"Not to minimize their actions of being very aggressive, violent or doing death threats, but I like to hope in the future, when people are less stressed and in a better position, things will calm down," she said.

She also faced criticism earlier this year over her novel itself, with some high-profile commentators questioning her decision to "draw cartoons" as the city was embroiled in the COVID-19 crisis.

Plante dismissed this as unfounded, especially since she says the writing process wrapped up in late 2019.

"People were just kind of trashing the book (without) even reading it, which I thought was sad, because it wasn’t about the content, it was about criticizing the author," she said. However, she did push back the book's publication for a few months when the pandemic's second wave began.

Plante said she would still recommend politics to young people who want to make a difference, even as she acknowledges it's a "tough" career that comes with unusual levels of public exposure.

"But hopefully people see in the book, the love that you get from your volunteers, it's a community, it’s people working together," she said.

"It’s worth it."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2020.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press

News media lobby group asks MPs for rules to get compensation from Google, Facebook

OTTAWA — A lobby group for Canada's newspapers and magazines is asking MPs to enact new rules to help its members negotiate compensation from social-media giants that post content the traditional media produce.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

News Media Canada wants the government to let the industry negotiate collectively with the likes of Google and Facebook.

There are similar rules in other countries, such as Australia and France, where Google announced last week it had signed compensation agreements with several daily newspapers and magazines, including Le Monde.

News Media Canada's CEO, John Hinds, said Canadian rules similar to those would negate the need for any new taxes or spending programs.

"It allows the industry and the digital monopolies to negotiate fair terms for compensation," Hinds told MPs on the House of Commons heritage committee Friday.

"It doesn't raise taxes, it doesn't deal with government sort of intervening in the marketplace, but it allows a fair market interaction between the platforms and newspapers."

The committee is studying the challenges the pandemic has created for media and culture groups.

Several members of the committee lamented the reduction in local news coverage as their newspapers cut back on coverage and editions to keep the lights on.

Hinds said some smaller newspapers closed permanently due to the pandemic, while larger publications saw newsroom layoffs.

The federal wage subsidy, he said, has been helpful in avoiding worse.

Advertising revenue plunged by 75 per cent at the start of the pandemic in many markets, he said, and the industry is still struggling with advertising declines in the range of 30 per cent.

The federal government announced a $30-million communications budget at the start of the pandemic, but Hinds said there was limited placement of the resulting ads in Canadian news media.

"The government can deliver on its mandate to communicate with Canadians by implementing a strategy of placing ads where Canadians are looking for trusted content and advertising," he said.

Without federal help, he added, the future is grim for many of his member organizations.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2020.

The Canadian Press

Hungarian official retracts comparing George Soros to Hitler


BUDAPEST, Hungary — After facing strong condemnation, a Hungarian commissioner on Sunday begrudgingly retracted an article comparing American-Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, a staunch critic of Hungary’s government, to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“Europe is George Soros’ gas chamber,” Szilard Demeter, ministerial commissioner and head of the Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest, wrote in an opinion Saturday in the pro-government Origo media outlet. “Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the European way of life.”

The comments drew outrage from Hungary’s Jewish community, including the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, which called the article “tasteless” and “unforgivable.”

“(It's) a textbook case of the relativization of the Holocaust, and is therefore incompatible with the government’s claim of zero tolerance for anti-Semitism,” the group said.

In a statement Sunday on Origo, Demeter said he would retract his article “independently of what I think" and will delete his Facebook page.

“I will grant that those criticizing me are correct in saying that to call someone a Nazi is to relativize, and that making parallels with Nazis can inadvertently cause harm to the memory of the victims,” he said in a statement.

In the article, Demeter, who was appointed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to oversee cultural production, compared Soros to Hitler, writing he was “the liberal Führer, and his liber-Aryan army deifies him more than did Hitler’s own.”

Soros, who was born in Hungary and is a Holocaust survivor, is a frequent target of Orban’s government for his philanthropic activities that favour liberal causes. Government media campaigns targeting Soros have led to charges of anti-Semitism.

The article also noted the conflict over the European Union’s next budget, which Hungary and Poland are holding up over provisions that could block payments to countries that do not uphold democratic standards. Demeter referred to the two countries, both of which are under EU investigation for undermining judicial independence and media freedom, as “the new Jews.”

The government of Israel, a close ally of Hungary, condemned Demeter’s comments.

The Israeli Embassy in Budapest tweeted, “We utterly reject the use and abuse of the memory of the Holocaust for any purpose … There is no place for connecting the worst crime in human history, or its perpetrators, to any contemporary debate.”

Gordon Bajnai, a former Hungarian prime minister, wrote on Facebook on Sunday that if Demeter isn't removed from his post by Monday, “Hungarians and the rest of the world will obviously consider (his) statement as the position of the Hungarian government.”

Justin Spike, The Associated Press

No, Jake Tapper, Rashida Tlaib Is Not Antisemitic For Criticizing Netanyahu

Elly Belle REFINARY29

© Provided by Refinery29 AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 10: Jake Tapper speaks during the ‘CNN Democratic Town Hall’ at ACL Live at The Moody Theater during the 2019 SXSW Conference And Festival on March 10, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Gary Miller/FilmMagic)

© Provided by Refinery29 WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 18: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) listens as acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 18, 2019 in Washington, DC. The hearing is on “The Trump Administration’s Child Separation Policy.” (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

After implying that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is antisemitic on Twitter, CNN’s Jake Tapper is now being slammed for his bad faith comments. Following news about President-elect Joe Biden appointing Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Tlaib tweeted her concerns about the politician’s stance on Israel — and the potential that her criticisms of Netanyahu would be squashed.

When it was announced that Blinken was Biden’s pick for the cabinet position, Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign manager, tweeted that he’s a “solid choice.” In response, Tlaib quote-tweeted her remark, saying, “So long as he doesn’t suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu’s racist and inhumane policies. The Palestinian people deserve equality and justice.”

Tlaib’s reply referred to the Israeli Prime Minister’s response to the humanitarian movement in Palestine. The next day, she further clarified what she meant: “Sec. Pompeo has moved to suppress BDS [Boycott, Divest and Sanctions], a peaceful protest movement protected by the 1st Amendment. I hope that Mr. Blinken and President-elect Biden’s Administration will change course from Trump’s State Department & not target or suppress support of Palestinian human rights.”

However, Tapper weighed in on her first comment in a now-deleted retweet of Tlaib, saying, “[What] is it about Secretary of State–nominee Blinken that he makes the Congresswoman think that he would try to suppress her views about the Prime Minister of Israel? Hmmm.” The tweet clearly insinuated that Tlaib was uneasy about Blinken being Jewish, as opposed to the power he’ll soon wield over foreign relations.


Shortly after he was called out for implying Tlaib’s comments were antisemitic, Tapper deleted the tweet. Then, he rewrote it: “Blinken and Biden are both on the record opposing efforts to punish/sanction BDS (though they also oppose BDS) so I’m not sure what it is about Blinken that would prompt this tweet.”

Still, his first tweets gained too much attention before being taken down for the targeted attack on Tlaib. “It says a lot that someone with your level of bigoted hatred can not only succeed at a place like CNN but be celebrated by liberals around the country. I guess targeting your racism and hate at Muslims makes it okay,” tweeted journalist Eoin Higgins. Many leveled criticisms at Tapper for targeting Tlaib for being a Muslim, and clearly misrepresenting and misunderstanding her original tweets about Israel on purpose.

As a Palestinian-American, Tlaib has often held the Israeli government accountable for occupying Palestine, and has advocated for the United States to end its aid to the country. In addition to this criticism, she’s often expressed support for the BDS movement there: She was also one of 17 members of Congress to vote against a resolution that would condemn BDS.

Despite all of this, Tlaib has consistently been labeled antisemitic for her concerns around Israel and Israeli leadership. But she’s continued to explain that she has nothing against Israeli people themselves, only the effect that the Israeli government has had on Palestinians. As of publication, Jake Tapper has not yet issued an apology to Tlaib for his insinuations, and she has not responded to or acknowledged his statements — though many have come to her defense to point out the true meaning of her concerns.